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A lot of people describe Scalzi’s Old Man's War novels as military science fiction, but I would classify its sequel Zoë’s Tale as a space opera. It’s a story about, well, Zoë, a teenage girl whose parents are invited to take leadership roles in building a colony on a new planet. Zoë is an enthusiastic member of the group sent to colonize Roanoke, despite the risks—and the risks are considerable even before the political machinations of greater powers boil to the surface. Continue reading Zoë’s TaleReview by SilkDiscuss it in our forums.

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Topic: Planets and Systems (Read 6250 times)

Colonizing systems are how you grow your empire and generate income. Planets are a bit too fine detail for this game engine, so we rely on system stats for our highest level of control. If you need to justify this, just assume there is only one inhabitable planet per system.

Systems are connected by jump routes (Class 1, 2, or 3) and contain a variety of resources. Unless you're relying on source material, you can randomly generate each system as it is discovered.

Stats

Population - number of inhabitants in the systemProduction - amount of industry in the systemCapacity - the amount of population a system can supportLode - amount of raw resources in the systemMorale - the current morale of the systemMaximum Morale - the maximum morale allowed by the systemBase Morale - a percent that can be modified by certain conditions. This is multiplied by maximum morale to determine current morale.

For shorthand purposes, the morale of a system is listed in a line called Morale Status. It is written as Current Morale (Max Morale) Base Morale. For example, if a sytem had a Current Morale of 4, a Max Morale of 8, and Base Morale of 50%, it would be written like this: 4 (8) 50%

Capacity a number between 1 and 12. Lode is anywhere from 1 to 6.

Some systems have special qualities that can modify the base numbers. Examples include:Rich in Minerals (Lode +1)Good Climate (Max Morale +1)etc.

IncomeIncome is generated by multiplying the Lode by the Production Capacity. Production Capacity is the amount of industry used by the population. Basically, the amount of industry that is used is limited by the population of a system.

For example, if a system had a Pop of 3 and a Production of 5, only 3 Production would be utilized.

MoraleThe Current Morale of a system limits the amount of population that can be utilized for production. It is wise to keep your morale high, though some technologies remove this limit. For example, if the Morale Status of a system is 4 (8) 50% the Population that could be used for determining Producation Capacity would be capped at 4. This would make no difference if the Population was under 4.

Modifiers to Base Morale - some of these are long-term, others would only last a turn. Examples:- System distance from homeworld, -10% per jump- Outbreaks and Raids (Random Events, variable)- losing a battle within X systems, -X%- Winning a battle within X systems, +X%- Presence of enemy fleet withing system, -20%- Presence of friendly fleet within system, +10%- Orbital Bombardment, -X%- Sabotage and Terrorism, -X%- form of govn't, -/+X%etc.

Max Morale can also be modified. This is usually done by building assets. For example, each level invested in a Religious Sanctuary on the system increases Max Morale by 1.

I'd like the following idea. Each time you encounter a new planet, you (or the GM) rolls randomly to determine a few things. Continent #, continent size, atmosphere, size, gravity, so on. Then as the player colonises it, he chooses where his people are (say, we divide the world up into 10 portions, location depending on continents exact details), and he decides where each chunk goes. That assumes there is 10 'levels' of population, more chunks for more population should be the key.

Each time the population changes size, the player chooses where the new chunk goes, and what it is - ie, agriculture, heavy industry, light industry, services (banks, other interstellar insitutions), dockyards, pure population and so on. Each type having different planet wide benefits (independant of actual facilities mind). So if you have more than 3 Heavy Industry regions, you get a certain pollution score (reducing agriculture, requiring imports). If it's all agriculture it's industrial potential (same as minerals in AC lets say) goes down even further.

This allows the player to really set the theme of a world - if you want your new world to become coruscant, go for Services, Pure Population and so on, using various facilities to get around the agricultural deficit. There should always be benefits to every possible type of world.

Now, this also ties into combat. You wanted fronts. Well, I think that when players land forces as an attack, they should decide which chunks to attack. They can only land heavy stuff (mech legions or such) in areas of Agriculture or unocccuped, while Infantry can go anywhere. This means that players can really be strategic with how they deploy their units - will they move to cut off the heavy industry clump up on the northern part of that continent, or will they annihilate the agricultural areas (thereby meaning that even if they are driven off, the world starves)?

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If you're ever in an argument and Entropy winds up looking staid and temperate in comparison, it might be time to cut your losses and start a new thread about something else

Also: there should be synergy bonuses to having multiple regions of the same type together. Otherwise players will just have patchwork quilts of random placements to avoid losing all of one type during an invasion. Again, strategy. Do you put ALL your industry together to gain (ever decreasing) synergy bonuses, or spread it out in smaller clumps for added safety?

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If you're ever in an argument and Entropy winds up looking staid and temperate in comparison, it might be time to cut your losses and start a new thread about something else

Each unit could have deploy capabilities as part of its description (etc).

FYI: There are several good/free world/solar system creation websites out there, which could be used to make "world generation" easy. However, if one wants to oversimplify, a more abstract in-house generation system may be used.

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"Never argue with a fool; they'll bring you down to their level, and then beat you with experience."

I think that you should be able to pass the maximum population of a certain region in exchange for morale, for 1% you are passing the region's population limit, take 5% from net morale of the region. I think the net morale of a system should be the averaged morale of the ten sectors of your planet, with any modifiers added on (enemy fleets in system, for example).

Things like Outbreaks, Terrorism, etc. could effect the region they are in, which would be determined by rolling a ten-sided die, with 100% capacity, and all other regions on the planet with 10% capacity.

For Example:A terrorist attack takes place in sector 2/10 on my planet. The roll of two ten-sided die multiplied together states the significance of the attack. I roll a 7 and a 5, so it takes away 35% from that region's net morale. All other regions on that planet have 3.5% taken from their net morale.

The same system can be instituted for system-wide things, such as having a system at war. This could put a XX% reduction from that system's net morale, and an X.X% reduction from all other system's net morales. This type of system puts a more realistic universe-wide morale replica, but it could be a little too complicated for a game that is supposed to be macro...

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"Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other 'sins' are invented nonsense."Robert Heinlein

"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little."Edmund Burke

Entropy, that's a fantastic idea. Let me put it in a bit more context though and we can see where we run with it.

Hmmm...I was going to write a post trying to wedge this into the system I've already laid out, but I'm going to spend some time trying to revise the system to make this work. I like the idea of population allocation a lot. I also like the morale system a lot and I need to figure out how much I can get them to work together.

One thing...10 zones will be too much. Planets won't have that many troops usually. 3 to 4 is more like it.

One thing...10 zones will be too much. Planets won't have that many troops usually. 3 to 4 is more like it.

Hrm, 3 - 4 zones doesn't really give that much possibility for variation I feel. After all, almost every world would end up being 1 agriculture, 1 heavy industry, 1 light and so on. I want there to be enough zones that it's more than just another set of buildings. It should be possible to really tinker how a world is, to the point of having slightly more industry and such. With 3 - 4 it's a very binary choice - is this world industry or not? Yes/no.

There is also the thing to consider that there is no real need to totally link zones of production to zones of attack. There can be two interlinked layers, 3 or 4 zones for the attack layer, and the production (with my types above) being nestled within it.

Let's say there is 4 zones on the planet (called, oh, arrakin). It has 3 continents, two small one big, and the combat zones consist of the two small continents and half each of the big one. Each of these zones can have 2 or 3 production zones within them. Maybe we can use the combat zones to show general climate as well (this area has temperate, so is better for agriculture. This is rocky, so it's crap at all but best at heavy industry. And so on). Each production zone can be placed wherever, but again, with the synergy bonuses (have an entire combat zone filled with 3 heavy industry and it counts as 4 heavy industry, or something like that) and you can really have the tradeoff between defencibility (you can lose any zone and still have a bit of everything) or sheer power (keep em together to get the money).

Note that I am assuming that ground combats will last long enough for this to be important. Ideally, I see ground combat as sprawling out over several turns, being more than just a afterthought addition to the space battles. I see it as you approach a system, fight a battle that determines what happens in the initial engagement, then land troops and have space and ground battles continue for several turns - will the defending player manage to rush enough reinforcements to the planet before the attacker overwhelms those few poor garrison infantry?.

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If you're ever in an argument and Entropy winds up looking staid and temperate in comparison, it might be time to cut your losses and start a new thread about something else

We need to figure out how planets are going to be handled in the real and abstract, and I'm not even talking mechanics so much as handling of geography/zoning.

Possibilities:

Zones are abstractions. You list the zones on a planet, but don't touch geography. Geography doesn't exist except as a list.

Some sort of external "world creation" program is implimented to create varied worlds randomly and quickly, after which continents are mapped into zones to fit game terms, complete with pre-existing geography.

Some form of in-game geographic world-creation system is devised which allows for geographic zoning.

Some other alternative?

The easiest thing to do would be option 1 - just use abstractions and don't worry about specific continents/geography. However, we may want interesting rather than easy.

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"Never argue with a fool; they'll bring you down to their level, and then beat you with experience."

I think the only geography that should be used is water-to-land ratio. Or Liquid-to-Land ratio. Roll a 100-sided die and you're done. I also think there should be certain benefits to having more water than land or having more land than water. Maybe certain buildings cannot be built under water, and water regions get a defensive bonus?

« Last Edit: August 14, 2005, 12:26:33 PM by GorgontheWonderCow »

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"Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other 'sins' are invented nonsense."Robert Heinlein

"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little."Edmund Burke

Right now I'm thinking the zone thing may be a bit too detailed for this. I was thinking just that each zone equaled a large city or important site...basically they're the important battles of the planet ("You fought at the Massacre of Audbair City?").

We have to remember that we don't want to get bogged down too much in the details.

What I like about my original system is that it's abstract enough to be simple, but you can come to your own conclusions about it.

I like what Entropy's saying and I think we can use some of his ideas, but we've got to make sure this stays relatively simple. It's easy to lose the bit picture when there's all kinds of cool things we could do with the small picture.

For example, a planet with a capacity of 5 (randomly rolled with 2d6) isn't the most hospitable of planets. It could have a ton of water or a harsh environment of some sort as population is limited so much. With Terraforming you can increase it and imagine it however you want.